Tracy Seneca, head of digital program services at UIC talks about bringing historical Chicago building permits online at ALA's 2023 Annual Conference and Exhibition in Chicago.

Scrappy Mapping

June 28, 2023

“We’d find shards of microfilm on the floor,” said Tracy Seneca, UIC’s head of digital program services. The collection was scanned in 2018, but the scans were no easier to search than the microfilm—you still needed to know the exact address, she said. Seneca is now helping UIC make searchable, online digital records of its … Continue reading Scrappy Mapping


Neatline allowed Illinois Institute of Technology Libraries to create an interactive campus building timeline.

On the Map

September 1, 2021

Neatline User: Adam Strohm, director of University Archives and Special Collections, Paul V. Galvin Library, Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago What is Neatline? Neatline is an open source suite of plug-ins that adds geotemporal functionality to Omeka exhibits and allows users to situate exhibit items in space and time. Its SIMILE add-on provides an interactive … Continue reading On the Map


From left: Melinda Shelton, Jefferson Bailey, and Makiba Foster discuss the Community Webs archiving program at DPLAfest 2019 in Chicago. Photo: Carrie Smith/American Libraries

Community Collaboration at DPLAFest 2019

April 22, 2019

Archiving the local web In order to maintain their local collections, public libraries are looking to web archiving. “Community Webs: Empowering Public Librarians to Create Community History Web Archives” explored how two public libraries are using the Internet Archive’s Community Webs program. Jefferson Bailey, director of web archiving and data services at the Internet Archive, … Continue reading Community Collaboration at DPLAFest 2019


Dispatches, by Hsuanwei Michell Chen

Design and Conquer

May 1, 2017

Be clear and concise. Ensure that the data you are illustrating is comprehensive and accurate. The goal is to convey the greatest number of ideas in the smallest amount of space in the shortest number of words. A good resource to review for inspiration is The Visual Display of Quantitative Information by Edward R. Tufte. … Continue reading Design and Conquer


A few of the 75 Civil War–era photographs that were taken from Bangor (Maine) Public Library and later recovered. These images, along with 50 original World War I– and World War II–era posters that were stolen, had an estimated value of $31,000. The image of the officer leaning over his chair helped identify the set as belonging to the library.

Thwarting Book Thieves

September 16, 2015

What Graves didn’t know was that by the time he brought them to the dealer, the owner had already seen the items at the library a few weeks earlier. “I had been talking about them to the owner while he was visiting our special collections area,” says special collections librarian Bill Cook of Bangor (Maine) … Continue reading Thwarting Book Thieves